


Veracity

by GuardianLioness



Series: Young Justice Platonic Soulbond AU [7]
Category: The Flash (Comics), The Flash - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Blended Canon, Except Barry and Iris Aren't, F/M, Influences from Flash 2014 TV Show, Influences from Pre-Nu52 Canon, Platonic Soulbond AU, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 09:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16595000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianLioness/pseuds/GuardianLioness
Summary: Detective Singh forces Barry to give an interview with the one and only Iris West, reporter extraordinaire. Barry's met her before, but it's one thing to talk to her as the Flash, and quite another to talk to her as an ordinary CSI. It only gets more complicated when he notices the edge of a tell-tale pattern at her shoulder.A Soulmate/Soulbond AU in which everyone has multiple marks - one for each of the people most important in their lives.





	Veracity

**Author's Note:**

> Characterization warm-up for the promised mentor-mentee fic surrounding Barry and Wally. I don't write any form of romance or flirting all that often, so critique is welcomed. Shipping is...not my wheelhouse. Also, Young Justice doesn't really talk about the adults' connections to each other, so I had a little bit of fun with it.
> 
> The lovely [piades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piades) and [Platon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Platon/pseuds/Platon) gave me the encouragement I needed to wrap this up and post it.
> 
> For any of the non-shippers following this series: you don't have to read this to understand anything else in the remainder of the series. Feel free to skip it! ;)

The shop bell chimes as Barry pushes past the door and is met by the deep, rich scent of coffee. He takes in a breath, savoring the different layers of warm java beans, fresh vanilla, and the sweetly cloying smell of caramel. Even though caffeine doesn’t work on him anymore, it’s a comforting thing, digging up memories of late-night lab sessions and new discoveries.

Today, of all days, he could use the calm it offers.

It’s all Captain Singh’s fault. There are plenty of other CSIs at the Central City Police Department. Plenty who are better at talking to people. Heck, even Julian Albert would be a better choice for this than Barry.

But no, Singh just had to send him to talk to a reporter about the rash of petty, non-Rogue crimes in the industrial district out near Keystone. And of course, it couldn’t be just any reporter putting the story together. It had to be her.

Predictably, she’s already there, seated at a two-person table underneath a wall hanging printed with a large mandala. She’s got a steaming coffee cup in hand, and she turns toward the door when the chime rings. Coils of glossy, copper hair spill over her shoulder, and her bright, green eyes fix on him as she smiles.

Iris West isn’t a stranger. They’ve spoken before at length. Except, at the time, Barry had the security of a reinforced cowl and a lightning bolt sigil across his chest. It’s different when he’s only shielded by a button-down shirt and a CCPD employee badge.

“Sorry I’m late,” he starts, but she stands up to cut him off.

“Barry, right?” Iris brushes a strand of hair back behind her ear. “Don’t worry about it. The captain said he might be keeping you later than you thought.”

Covering for his chronic lateness? That’s a new one, even if the captain has been watching out for Barry for years.

After a quick handshake, Barry finds his words again. “Yes, Iris West, right? I’ve read your work in the _Citizen_.” Pretending — that they’ve never met, that he doesn’t know how brilliant she is as an investigator and a journalist — leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

“So you _have_ heard of me!” She laughs. “In that case, can I buy you a drink?”

“Thank you,” he says, waving the offer away, “ but I’ll look after myself. I’ve already inconvenienced you enough.”

"No, I insist," she says breezily, setting her cup down and slipping past him with a flick of her wrist. "You have a usual order?"

"Just a regular. Either normal or decaf is fine."

Her nose wrinkles, and a dramatic frown pulls the line of her lips out of shape. "Decaf? No wonder you're late, if that's what they give you at the precinct." The pleased expression returns to her face with a self-satisfied edge. "I can fix that, though."

Iris slides into the line in front of the counter, one arm folded over her chest. Her fingers pick at the edge of her purple sleeveless shirt, running over something that Barry can't quite see from the table. A nervous habit?

He sits down, only to catch himself mirroring her by fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt.

Somehow, Iris scares him just as much in a coffee shop as she did the day they met. Though, admittedly, it’s not the same kind of scared as when she stepped out in front of Heatwave's assault to shield her photographer. Barry was almost too late. _Was_ too late, though not fatally so. Her free arm still bears the healing burn pattern.

A moment later, she's back with his drink and claims the chair across from him. He takes the cup, biting his lip when his fingers threaten to shake. "So, shall we get started with the Steel District cases?"

He takes a deep drink, letting the warmth seep into his bones. Maybe the caffeine does have something of an effect on him, because when he sets it down, he's ready. There's a notebook out on the table, and Iris is watching him with her piercing eyes, but this is about _facts,_ facts and deductions. He's more than comfortable with both.

Barry walks through the basics of the first, prototypical robbery of the chain, describing the unusual shatter patterns on the warehouse security locks, the oddly worn tire treads leading away from the scene, and the haphazard mess left behind. Some of the information is still classified for the purposes of the investigation, and given the slight turn of her lips, she's noticed that his story is missing a piece or two but doesn't interrupt.

The pen flies across paper, jotting down notes in a tightly written shorthand. When his story lulls, she interrupts with one carefully worded question and then another. It takes the third question for him to realize that she's nimbly leading him around information that he isn't allowed to reveal.

As she marks down his answer, her hand drifts back to her shoulder again, a light touch brushing against skin. Thin, white lines poke from the finished edge of the shirt, branching down from her neck like forking tree roots.

The twisting tail of white, scarlike tracks comes together in a clean point at the base, slanting to the left. Tree roots — are they tree roots or crawling electricity? Like lightning? Like his lightning?

The thought jolts into his head unbidden. The neat origin point of the mark and the loose, reaching edges are an exact match. He’s sure of it; the burning gold image of his mark across his father’s arm and Jay’s shin are seared into his memory.

“Barry?” Iris tilts her head, her pen hand drifting to a stop. “You alright?”

His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. A nervous tremor runs through his hands. No, it’s wishful thinking. It has to be wishful thinking, and that in and of itself is a realization that needs some time to process, but—

She watches him intently, calmly, eyes darting first to his own subtly mirrored position, then drifting to follow his gaze. For a long moment, she just looks down at the tendrils of the bondmark, jaw working like she's gnawing at the inside of her cheek. Iris turns back to him, but says nothing, and the tight coil of panic in his chest relaxes.

Yeah, she caught him staring, but she also chose not to address it, and for that, he's thankful.

Snatching the coffee cup and taking another swig to mask the heat rising to his face, he waits for her next question.

They breeze through an explanation about the tensile strength of a steel alloy produced only in a specific mill on the Keystone City border. She picks up the scientific details in seconds, a testament to the veracity of her articles. There's a reason that the Central City Citizen sent her to interview the Flash, and it's not _just_ her smile that has the local TV station testing her commitment to the pen-and-paper flavor of journalism.

Halfway through explaining the half-life of an isotope typically left behind by the Rogues' weapons to demonstrate why the Steel District heists are considered a plainer form of larceny, she sets the pen down again, right in the middle of his sentence.

Barry's own panic takes him by surprise. He blinks, and the world is frozen. At least this time, only his brain appears to have ratcheted up to lightning-pulse speed. He's still sitting down, not phasing through the chair or floor.

There's something about the pen stopping in its path along the paper that's terrifying. It's an interruption. An interruption borne of observation, of frustration with the available information, of the need to understand.

Even though he's pretty sure Iris already understands. Suspects, at least.

He waits there in the slow motion world, his heart rate creeping up, and up, and up. The beauty of the lightning is that he can stretch the moment out. Not for an eternity, but long enough to _think_.

If it weren't for the lines, he'd never have been so presumptuous, so straightforward. For one, to hope or even wish is irresponsible. The line of work that he's chosen with the help of Jay Garrick is dangerous at best. After the stories related to him by the older speedster and his wife, Barry shouldn't even be thinking about finding any other bonds.

So really, he shouldn't even be hoping.  Shouldn't be wishing. Shouldn't be seeing his pattern where it probably doesn't actually exist.

He huffs out a sigh, giving his head an infinitesimal shake. It’s irrational, and maybe more than a little prideful to think that the anxious, eager gesture of her fingers drifting over the unawakened bond could be meant for him.

The thrum of his pulse starts to slow. As soon as he drops out of the time between seconds, as soon as she starts to phrase her question, he’ll apologize. Both for staring, and for being presumptuous enough to consider the similarity of the mark to his own sigil.

The level of awkwardness might not be recoverable. Which, though nothing new to him in terms of social contexts, still sends a pang of sadness washing over him. Talking to her is just…different. The way her eyes light up when he can answer an arcane question about the temperature and consistency of melted tire treads is not something he expects to experience in the span of a normal conversation.

Inch by agonizing inch, the world comes into full motion again. The drone of the shop returns, voices and coffee grinders and the door chime ringing surrounding them once again.

Iris shuts her notebook. Hand curled under her chin, eyes narrowed, she watches him.

The barista is still blending coffee at a normal pace, and Barry can make out vaguely intelligible conversation behind him, which means he hasn’t slipped back into Flash-time. She’s really just staring at him.

He looks down at his hands, picks at the cardboard sleeve on the coffee cup, and waits for the burning sensation of her gaze to stop.

“So,” she says, a long minute later. “Now that we’re even in terms of awkward watching, I’ve got to ask why. You’re not a creep, and that means there’s something else going on.”

Explaining would be easier without the thickness of words sticking in his throat. “Sorry, I thought I recognized the mark on your shoulder.”

“Oh?”

Her thumb hooks in the fabric of the shirt, pulling the edge further back along her shoulder. The lines spill out further across her skin in twisting lines. They are definitely not botanical.

He doesn’t speak, jaw clenched. It’s his, it’s _his_ , and the sureness of it is so strong that his head spins. The coffee abandoned on the table, he starts to stand, to push his chair back, to put some distance between them.

“Stop. Please?” Her voice is gentle, void of the razor wit from earlier. “Talk to me. You recognize it, right?” Barry nods mutely, the fingers on his right hand seeking the fabric of his shirt cuff once more. “I need to know.”

He sits back down, his shoulders heavy. “It’s mine.”

A graceful, faint smile hovers on her lips, and her shoulders relax. “Mine trails,” she says. “Like vines.”

Like vines. He’s got a mark that could match that description. Lines weave together, forming a shape that settles between plants draped over a trellis and a decorative knot.

“Oh,” Iris says, as his hand drifts to the place along his upper arm where it’s printed on his skin. “Twin marks.”

“A what?”

She snorts into her coffee and plays with a strand of burnished hair as she explains. “It’s an old wives’ tale. Marks in matching places are supposed to be good luck. Stronger.”

There’s a rhyme, now that she says it. A children’s chant, or fairy tale, or something. His mom must have talked about it once, because when he thinks about it, he hears her voice in his head.

“There’s no proof behind it, at least, nothing that would satisfy a scientist like yourself, but still. There’s something poetic about it.”

Maybe there is. Or, maybe there could be, if he weren’t fighting back the surge of adrenaline that jolts through him at the soft, almost pleading hope in her voice.

He’s going to have to break that hope. To pick it apart and throw it away. Because he can’t be that important to her. Not when the lightning crackles through his blood and bones.

“Poetic,” Barry repeats. In a way, it is. Poetically tragic. Lovely and sad all at once.

But if he could, if the looming threat of her safety weren’t in question, would he feel differently? Would he be as scared as he is now? He can’t deny the fluttering hope in his chest.

If it wasn’t in question, would he have already reached out, breath caught in his chest, waiting to see what color surges into his vision? Would he be desperately hoping that the gold light promised her something _good_? What would it feel like, for her? Gold sparks bursting in her vision, his own light overwhelmed by…what? Green like her eyes? Blue, or red, or orange, or all three together?

He swallows.

Yes.

If the Flash didn’t exist, or if he could protect the people closest to him, he would be smiling, his hand reaching out, waiting for her to meet him halfway. If it weren’t through the danger, he could look past the anxieties of the past. He could look past the finished mark on his chest and the torn, scarred mark along his opposite arm. He can’t, however, make that choice for her.

If she knew, though, if she made her own choice, informed of all the danger his life entailed, then maybe…

It’s selfishness that convinces him to move. “You know, Iris,” he whispers, tongue swiping across his cracked lips. “This isn’t the first time we’ve met.”

His thumb traces against the metal band on his pointer finger, and he slides his palm across the table. The ring, which holds his compressed Flash uniform, is etched with the lightning bolt on the costume. She’ll know what it means.

Her gaze focuses first on him, on the nervous twitch of his smile, and then on the face of the ring. It lingers there for a moment. She squints, her head tipping to one side, considering. “Really?”

“Guess I’m not very memorable.” Barry lets a tremor run through his vocal chords, the kind that keep his voice disguised when he hides behind the mask. It’s faint, but enough. Her head snaps up.

“Ah,” she says mildly, “that would explain the lightning.”

“Guess so.” He shrugs awkwardly and then scoops up the now empty cup, just to have something in his hands. She should have as much time to process this as she needs.

“You were, though.”

“What?” he asks, folding down the corner of the cardboard sleeve.

“Memorable. You surprised me. I wasn’t expecting someone so…”

“Average?” He smirks a little, thinking about the distinct lack of panache — of _flash_ — with which he’d answered her interview questions.

“Humble,” she corrects him. “Unassuming, maybe. All that skill, all that ability, and you still believe in the little people. In us. That you're one of us.”

“I am,” he says, folding the opposite sleeve corner to match. The cardboard is sturdy, pushing back against his fingertips as he pins it in place. “That’s all I’ve ever been. All I’ve ever wanted to be, anyway. Normal, just…with a little more ability to help.”

“Did you choose this?”

It’s his turn to look up, startled. There’s only pensive curiosity on her face. Barry isn’t the only one whose secrets need protecting, so he can’t tell the whole story, but that’s a question he can answer honestly.

“Yes. It wasn’t _just_ my choice, but yes.” Jay had been there every step of the journey, had been the one to actually suggest that Barry take up the mantle. The decision nearly knocked him off his feet. It was one thing to have the privilege of hearing Flash history from the master himself. It was another to be offered the chance to chase wind, ride lightning, cross the earth.

Iris sits up straighter at that answer, but she doesn’t flip open a page in the notebook. There’s no journalist in her questions, save for the careful manner she uses as she chooses what to say. She’s not asking for an article. She’s asking to understand him

“Why?”

“When I was a kid, I saw something impossible. Impossible and...bad.” He sighs. “I’ve looked for explanations all my life. I met someone who could help me, and then I became impossible too. I’m...chasing an explanation. Chasing a way to _fix_ the bad.”

“Impossible,” Iris says, toying with a lock of hair. “I like the sound of that.”

“You do?” he says, abandoning the dog-eared cup.

“Why do we all have to be possible? Why can’t we change our world just by deciding to be something better?” She leans forward eagerly, smile splitting into a full grin. “That’s what you’re doing.

“You think so?”

“Of course, you’re a CSI!” Her nose wrinkles in amusement, and when his owlish expression focuses on her, she winks.

“It’s a good job.” Both of his jobs. They both help. One by taking justice, one by keeping people from needing it in the first place.

“You do realize that now that I know, I’m going to be after you for another interview, right?”

“I guess you could bribe me with coffee again.”

“A bribe? Don’t you work for the police?”

Barry snorts with laughter, grateful that he’s long finished his drink. He’d have choked otherwise. He covers his mouth, still snickering into his palm, and then something brushes dangerously close to his fingers.

Iris pushes into his space, leaning forward across the table, eyes glinting. Her hand hovers close to his, her shoulders are drawn in as if daring him to move away.

“Are you sure?” The words tear from Barry’s mouth before he can think through them, and her expression falls. The excited, hungry tension in her shoulders vanishes, caving to the slope of unease.

“Are you?”

His fingers curl and uncurl against the wooden tabletop. “You…you should think about my job. The darker side of what I do.”

She frowns. “I have.”

“And you’re choosing this anyway?”

Her frustration screams out in the way her jaw is set. “I already did. The second you told me this was yours. That’s how it works. You’re mine.”

Breath catching in his throat, Barry fights to speak. “Okay. Alright. If this is what you want.”

“You are.”

Her fingers curl around his, settling into place.

His vision is awash in a deep, soft purple.

Time stretches out, warping around him. He pushes his speed, heightens his awareness. He can’t put a name to it, but whatever the sensation is, it’s ferocious and kind and deep.

Finally, even his perception can’t prolong the pulse of emotion, and the purple fades.

Iris’s fingers stay locked around his, and the soft lines on her shoulder are flushed through with gold.

They sit there in silence, drinking it in.

“I think,” Iris says, her voice faltering for the first time, “that I’m really going to love you.”

“Good,” he says, not bothering to hide his relief. “Because I — I think you’re going to mean everything to me.”

 


End file.
